J. G. Ballard

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) was a British author and essayist. Although he found success as a science fiction and experimental writer, his best-known novel was the Empire of the Sun (1984), which told the story of a young British boy living in China under Japanese occupation during World War II. The story drew on Ballard's own childhood experience in Shanghai in the 1930s and '40s, where he spent two years in the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Centre, an internment camp for British and American civilians. Throughout his life, Ballard published more than fifteen novels and many more short stories and essays. He died in London at the age of 78.

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World War II brought grief and destruction, but it also inspired some of the most impassioned literature in history. Classic Stories of World War II includes excerpts from novels such as James Jones’s From Here to Eternity and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, as well as real-life accounts of the Battle of Britain by Guy Gibson and the exploits of the French Resistance by Nancy Wake. More than a dozen...